Bess Wohl

Playwright

Bess began her career as an actress, earning an MFA from Yale, and has since become a writer, developing for the stage, motion pictures, and television.  She is currently at work on a family drama about the meat business for HBO.  She is also working on an original musical about the adult entertainment business, a recent commission from the Center Theater Group in Los Angeles. Her first play, CATS TALK BACK, had its world premiere at the Yale Cabaret while she was a student at Yale.  It was subsequently performed at the Williamstown Theater Festival and finally at the NYC International Fringe Festival where it won the award for Best Overall Production. Her play, TOUCH(ED), had its world premiere at the Pioneer Theatre Company earlier this year. BARCELONA was recently workshopped at Ojai Playwrights Conference.  Her plays have been produced or developed at The Vineyard Theater, The Pittsburgh Public Theater, The Northlight Theater, TheaterWorks New Works Fesitval, and The Geffen Playhouse. Her work has also been supported by the MacDowell Colony, where she was recently a fellow. Upcoming productions include the world premiere of her play, IN, at the Pioneer Theater in 2011. Her screenplay adaptation of her play, IN was included on Hollywood’s Black List of best feature scripts. She has also developed for network television, and recently wrote an original pilot for Twentieth Century Fox Television/FBC. As an actress, Bess has appeared onstage in New York, regionally and at Williamstown Theater Festival (five summers) and in numerous films and TV shows, where she has given birth, solved crimes, committed crimes, been wrongly accused, and come back from the dead. She is a graduate of Harvard, Magna Cum Laude, where she was awarded the Rona Jaffe Writing Prize and the Tennessee Williams Scholarship.  At the Yale School of Drama, she was a recipient of the Rebecca West Scholarship. Wohl won the 2015 Drama Desk Sam Norkin Off-Broadway Award that recognizes excellence and significant contributions to the theater for establishing herself as an important voice in New York theater, and having a breakthrough year with the eclectic  AMERICAN HERO, PRETTY FILTHY and SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS. She is originally from Brooklyn, New York, and divides her time between New York and Los Angeles